


Wandering Astronaut

by Ryan Smith (rasmith121)



Category: Original Work
Genre: Hard Sci-fi, frontier life
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-05-11
Updated: 2019-05-11
Packaged: 2020-02-29 20:50:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,644
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18785956
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rasmith121/pseuds/Ryan%20Smith
Summary: What happens if we get to mars, establish a foothold, and then don't find life or liquid water? What happens to the people who dedicated their lives to explore the red planet? What do the firstborn Martians do when Mother Earth decides. . . it's just too expensive?





	Wandering Astronaut

_Mars Base Beta “Basket”_

_Sol 142, Year 46_ _M_

 _July 2050_ _E_

### Pel

“You remember the safety precautions you learned in the hab?” I asked them.

“Yes,” they responded at the same time before looking at each other, sheepish.

“How did you feel about them?”

Their brows furrowed in unison, they were expecting another yes/no question. They glanced at each other without moving their heads this time. Observing the subtle body language between Mary and Nik with only the barest hint of comprehension, I could see why people believe the myth that twins have some sort of supernatural connection.

Nik answered. “It was a lot to remember, and boring. . . but it’s what we were supposed to do, right?” A glance at me, then his sister, and back.

“How about you, Mary?”

“They kept us safe,” she said after a moment’s hesitation.

“You remember when you got S-clearance?” They nodded this time, so I pressed with, “What did you do when that happened?”

This time they both stopped to think. Nik happened upon a memory first and said, “The mu- I mean, the adults, they showed us the airlocks and explained what the surface was like. They said we could start surface walk training in the CO2 domes if we wanted, and we could go anywhere that wasn’t airlocked. Just, you know, knock if a door is shut, and that the airlocks were there to keep us alive so don’t open those ever.”

“-Also we couldn’t let any of the other kids near the airlocks. Just because we had S-clearance, they still had to wait. They said it was important because if they didn’t understand what the locks were and accidentally breached them, they would die. They still had K-clearance and they would get their S-clearance when they were old enough to understand.”

“Before that, did you ever go past where your K-clearance allowed?” I asked, trying to pitch the question as neutrally as possible. They glanced at each other anyway so I followed up with, “This isn’t an interrogation. We need people, so you’ve got the job. But this line of questions does have a point behind it that I’ll get to in a moment. Just answer truthfully.”

Mary looked relieved. Nik’s eyes fell to the floor.

“Yes,” Nik said.

“What happened?”

“The mungos took away our computer time,” Mary said, a hint of anger bubbling up. There was a sidelong glance at her brother that was so short I almost missed it.

“But no one got hurt, did they?”

The look she gave me said ‘That hurt enough’ but Nik answered, “No.” Time to drive it home.

“The deal when you had K-clearance was that you could not go in certain areas near the airlocks. That was the cost; your freedom of movement, and, if you broke the deal, your computer time. But the reward was your safety, and the safety of everyone else on the base.

“Then you got S-clearance. The deal changed. You were free to move wherever you liked, so long as you understood the danger outside and didn’t open the airlock doors. They protect us from the dangers on the surface.

“Now the deal is changing again.” Pointing at the Basket’s cargo doors,  I said, “There is no base to protect you out there. There’s your ship, your suit, and Mars. That’s it. It’s not just losing your computer time that you have to worry about. Safety precautions are for real now. If you don’t follow them, you or people you know will be hurt.”

“Pellava, we know all this,” Mary said, slightly impatient. “We understand the risks, they taught us in the surface walk program. We know what we’re doing.”

“Feel free to call me Pel. I believe you, and I understand your frustration. The point behind all this is simple. I want to know why you want to go through those airlocks. I know they need people here, you could do something else if you wanted to. Why take the risk of leaving the safety of the Basket?”

“You said when we got S-clearance we got freedom of movement. Freedom of movement around a base that consists of three shirtsleeve domes, some CO2 crop bowls, and seventeen miles of tunnel? That’s not freedom of movement, we were born in this prison and we’ll eventually die here too if we don’t get out.”

“Cabin fever is good motivation, in my experience.” She huffed as I looked to her brother. “What about you Nik?” He paused for a moment so I said, “The same answer is fine if that’s how you feel, I just want to hear you say it.”

“No, that’s not it. I’m just considering. I. . . I’ve spent a lot of time in the sims, and I think I want to see Earth. I’ve heard descriptions of the smell of the sea and how it feels to pack a snowball, listened to recordings of the crashing of waves on a beach and the chattering fauna of a rainforest and the scent of a rainy afternoon. We won’t ever have those things here. Or, at least not in my lifetime. I want that. I want to experience it. The only way to start on that path is out there.”

He noticed my eyebrows raise and looked sheepish again, so I told him, “That’s bold. You’re in.”

* * *

  


_Elysium Mons Eastern Shelf_

_Sol 156, Year 46_ _M_

 _August 2050_ _E_

 

### Pel

“Pel, Nik, Mary, suit up. We’re headed out.”

Mary muttered “Oh shit” as they jumped up and started throwing on their padding.

“Guys, calm down. Ten minute protocol, remember?” I said as I did the same.

“I know, but. . . I just didn’t think we’d get to go yet, you know? We sat out of the first one.”

“I think Val made that decision because of the slope and elevation the last time. It was more difficult than a usual run. We’ll be on mostly flat ground this time.”

We donned uniform cloth bodysuits with foam pads sewn in and made our way to the airlock, where we climbed into our pressure suits. Of the seven on the wall there were four different models and one that was officially decommissioned, with a crack that ran along the visor with tape over it. That hadn’t been a fun EVA. I was careful getting my left arm into ‘my’ suit because the patch at the elbow liked to pinch. I noticed Val did the same with his legs. The joints are always the first to go.

“Remember, we’re pretty high up the mountain. There’s even less air out there than usual. The suits can handle it, but don’t let your guard down.”

We checked our seals. Overpressured our suits to let the diagnostics software determine if there was any loss of air. Stood silently to audibly listen for a leak. We ran troubleshooting for the oxygen and nitrogen feeds and the carbon scrubs individually. The standard rigamarole that would keep us alive out in the dust.

“Mary, how you doin?” Val asked, looking from one to the other.

“Green,” Mary said.

“Nik?”

“Green.”

“Pel?”

“Green,” I said.

He stepped into the airlock. We followed.

Moment of truth.

The pressure equalized with the surface. My suit ballooned about a centimeter out at the left knee and around the middle, a result of the reinforcements that had been removed at some point in time in the process of maintaining it. I remembered suddenly that the suit was older than I was. But it held.

“Status.”

“Green.”

“Green.”

“Green.”

Val unlocked the hatch and pushed it open. He stepped out and I followed, then the twins behind me.

The red iron dust of Mars was blown about into nooks and crannies and short dunes of a few inches, but the key was to look where the dust wasn’t. We were at the lip of a small crater about a hundred and thirty meters in diameter and, like broken teeth, a few boulders marked the cliff edge of the basin. Some of the rocks’ surface was exposed above the ever-present dust and they looked black, maybe a hint of gray. Val and I started towards them.

Walking in a pressure suit sucks. It took us ten minutes to get over to the protrusions.

“Pel, take Mary and show her the spec. Nik follow me.” He went off towards a similar outcrop. I started training Mary.

“So we’re looking for anything useful. Geothermal activity would be the holy grail. Short of that, veins of ore are our bread and butter. Platinum, palladium, the highest value rare-earth metals are gold, we’ll set up an extractor and sell it. Short of that minerals that can be used for construction are common but rarely plentiful enough to matter. You’d need to find a mountain of iron before we can make anything off it, we can’t bring it back with us and anyone considering a Mars Base Beta-Epsilon is going to want everything they need close at hand.

I went over how to sample the exposed rock, how to set up dust shields so the ground-penetrating radar wouldn’t go haywire from all the conductive iron in the way, and how to do it without over-exerting one’s self. “Your stamina is the limiting factor out here, we bring all the O2 we’ll ever need. Don’t push too hard and pass out. Not going to lie, having two more sets of hands is going to make this a whole lot easier.

Mary was attentive, but not very helpful at first. After taking my own reading with the radar I showed her how to use it. She didn’t find anything either.

“Alright, you know what sunk cost fallacy is? We can stand here all day trying to find paydirt that isn’t here, or we can move. Pull up the stakes and move the dust shield about thirty meters that way. Try to both pick clear ground and stay parallel with Val and Nik.”

The second site went a little quicker. Mary knew how to pin the dust shield down, but she wasn’t very good at sweeping yet. I let her learn as I bent down to my left knee. It hit the ground at the exact moment that I remembered it was one of my suit’s weak points. I held my breath for a moment. Everything was fine.

Fuck. Why did I do that? I’m not usually that clumsy. Training Mary had my attention just divided enough that I was making stupid mistakes. I finished pinning down that side of the dust shield and stood up, making a mental note to favor my right knee from then on.

Over the coms I heard, “This is Val. We’ve got ore here. Zoel, bring the rover out.”

“Heard, scoop is on the way.”

Mary and I looked at each other. “You hear that?” I asked her, keeping to the local coms. “We’re getting paid.”

“Should we stop then?”

“No, we keep scanning. If we find more than them they have to buy us drinks.”

* * *

  


_Elysium Mons Eastern Shelf_

_Sol 156, Year 46_ _M_

 _August 2050_ _E_

 

### Mary

I was _not_ about to tell Pel that I had never had alcohol before. Basket did have some space set aside for ‘comfort crops’ but the mungos had never let me or Nik have any of the drinks that were made from them. I wasn’t even certain I wanted to try, but the thought of more credits than I had ever imagined was plenty enough incentive to keep sweeping.

It was a pretty smart setup they had. The crew had a big magnetic disc in a sealed plastic bag and a short bucket about twenty centimeters in diameter. Put the magnet in the bucket, put the bucket on the ground, and ‘sweep’ the ground until most of the iron dust was clinging to the bottom of the bucket. Then take it outside the tent that Pel called the dust shield, pry the magnet out of the bucket (this was actually pretty hard if there was a lot of iron dust on the bottom), and do it again until the ground was clear enough not to mess with the ground-penetrating radar.

The only way this failed is if the ground itself was conductive, and if it was then you’ve already found ore. Pel quickly taught me how to distinguish iron from the more useful metals as color was sometimes difficult. We had a couple of brushes as well as a small pick, but Pel said we would likely never use them. If it was worth digging, it was worth calling the rover and ‘the scoop’ over.

On our fourth scan site, we struck paydirt.

“You see that peak right there, about two meters down?” Pel asked me as we looked at the screen on the radar. “That’s something conductive. See how the signal basically falls apart beyond that, but to either side it goes another few meters? Now, it takes a while to guestimate this, but based on how much it occludes the ground below I’d say about four or five kilos of material.”

“That means it’s valuable?”

“Almost definitely, but it depends on what it is.”

“And it’s really just sitting here, a couple meters below the surface?”

“Yeah. It was likely distilled in the belly of Elysium Mons billions of year ago. Then it might have been shifted around a bit by plate tectonics before Mars went cold. _Then_ the mountain was eroded by martian winds for another couple billion years, and now it’s here. Earth had lots of surface deposits too before they went and mined them all, now they have to drill hundreds of meters down for them. Two meters is still a fair distance away. Guys?” I heard the _click_ that notified a change to the broadcast setting. “When you’re done with the scoop, we’ve got ore here.”

“Heard, loading up our haul now, we’ll be over in a sec.”

_Click._

“Alright, we’re going shift the dust shield over a bit that way, then sweep and scan again. Lets see how big this vein is.”

We started pulling up the stakes of the dust shield like they had a few times that day. Then I heard a _hiss_ and like eleven things happened at once. Alarms started going off in my suit and panic pounded in my chest.

_Click._

“Mayday!” I heard Pel say into broadcast, “Mayday, suit breach, losing pressure.”

Commander Valentine responded over the coms as I turned to see two narrow plums of vapor erupting from Pel’s suit, where the helmet met with the body. She had an emergency patch already out. She slammed into onto the wrinkled suit and the vapor plumes changed direction from perpendicular to parallel with the suit’s surface; it wasn’t a tight enough seal. Then Pel collapsed.

I took my own emergency patch and rolled Pel so that I could see where the breach was. The plumes had already dissipated, meaning her suit was depressurized. I placed my patch over the slight crease that had kept the first from sealing and pressed down hard.

“Pel, Mary, acknowledge!” she heard the Commander shout over the coms. He had been yelling into our ears for about ten seconds but it only just then broke through to me.

“Heard, first patch failed to seal, second patch applied, repressurising now!” I could heard the panic in my voice myself. With one hand I held the patch down, with the other opened up the panel on the back of Pel’s suit. It should be automatically repressurising and I saw that  the seal was holding, but I manually told it to aim for 1.2 atmospheric pressure and I upped the O2 concentration. If Pel’s lungs were damaged she would need higher O2 to compensate.

About thirty seconds after that I slowly lessened the pressure on the two emergency patches, keeping a close eye on the panel that read 1.2. It didn’t drop so I pulled the dust shield the rest of the way off.

In the distance, Commander Valentine and Zoel were on their way.

* * *

 

_Sub-orbital Transport Ship “Helen”_

_Sol 156, Year 46_ _M_

 _August 2050_ _E_

 

### Pel

Mars smells like blood.

Not just because I’m bleeding right now, I mean it always smells like blood. The dust that gets into everything is iron sand. That’s why it’s the red planet, it’s covered in a layer of rust and the smell constantly reminds me of blood.

What Mars needs most is _people._ This planet doesn’t need oxygen. High-tech oxygenators supplied with electricity can pull it out of the CO2 that composes the thin atmosphere. It doesn’t need food. The first thing humanity did, collectively, was figure out how to make a surplus of food so we don’t have to commit every individual’s labor to subsistence. With the high-tech green bubbles of Basket we have enough food to go around, the getting it around to everyone is the hard part. Mars doesn’t need fuel, because we’ve got high-tech reactors that can turn our direct-delivery-from-Earth hydrogen feedstock into methane/oxygen propellant through the Sabatier reaction. Yes, I have it memorized. No you don’t have to memorize it because here it is sprinting through my racing mind, uncalled for as I hold a hand to my shoulder and try not to lose consciousness:

 

CO2 + 4H2 → CH4 + 2H2O

 

With added bonuses of being exothermic (it does not need energy input, and in fact outputs energy) and producing water (humans need water), it’s the bread and butter of life on Mars. Helen has three steel-nickel Sabatier reactors to produce her fuel. The key is the hydrogen feedstock for the reaction delivered from Earth. Hydrogen is easy to make with both water and energy, you electrolyze the water into its components. Neither water nor energy are available in abundance on Mars, and the relative costs of making it here and shipping it in means we buy our hydrogen from Earth.

Okay, so, I mean. . . Mars does need some things other than people. We need hydrogen and nickel reactors to produce methane and water, as the most basic example. We need EVA suits that can keep us shielded from radiation and  without fucking breaking But right now Mars doesn’t _need_ need them. (Well, I guess I do actually need a new EVA suit). There is a demand, but it can be met at relatively low cost by a resupply ship from Earth as long as we can survive without it until the two year launch window syncs up again.

What I do is look for cheaper, sustainable alternatives here on Mars. Sustained production of the resources we need would allow us to grow so much faster, to expand our bases and the functions we can provide. If we can find a steady supply of the things we need here we won't have a flurry of activity around launch followed by long periods of boredom. Oh how I hate the boredom.

This mission, prospecting Mars, is dangerous. It requires time out on the surface, and even more time flung out across the untamed Martian wilds in our ship, far from any oasis of humanity. Sometimes these surface missions go awry, and the answer to the question _Why am I here?_ goes through my head as I try not to bleed to death. I’m here risking my life for the advancement of my planet.

Mars has a lot of resources literally just lying around. We could be using them to further the development of our species, our planet, and our solar system. Earth’s resources have many limitations on them, and for good reasons. But there is no argument to be made of treading on sacred ground or putting endangered species at risk here. Some say it’s a barren world. I see it as a pristine one.

What Mars doesn’t have in quantity is people. Living on a frontier has always had a cost. Sometimes that cost is a frightening amount of debt. Sometimes it’s a part of your life spent doing necessary work with few or no luxuries. And sometimes that cost is your life itself. I’m hoping for anything but the latter.

Sometimes. . . sometimes you’ve just got to rely on other people. Our species’ strength is our ability to work together, and if these shitheads don’t get me back to Basket soon there will be one less human around.

I feel Helen’s methane/oxygen engines rumble beneath me, then three g’s of force break my already tenuous grasp on consciousness.

* * *

  


_Mars Base Gamma a.k.a. “Gasket”_

_Sol 156, Year 46_ _M_

 _August 2050_ _E_

 

### Dr. Sadeh

There are currently three occupied Mars bases, which we’ve taken to calling Basket, Gasket, and Casket. We all use the Martian calendar, because we’re on Mars, and if it wasn’t for the computers automatically calculating out the time on Earth for us we’d probably have forgotten when it is there by now.

Alpha was the first of two missions sent in 37M (2029E). I remember watching their launch. It was early January and everyone felt like it was the dawning not of a new year but a new age. By the time Alpha landed on Mars, Earth had rotated around its axis 214 times since their departure, and Mars had done the same 208 times. They stepped onto the dusty plains of Argyre Planitia to find their Earth Return Vehicle (ERV) already landed and fueled and they got right to it.

Alpha doesn't get a nickname because it's gone now. An empty husk on the surface of Mars. I remember, back on Earth, the fanfare of every milestone they accomplished and the disappointment when we realized it wasn’t enough. We knew long before those pioneering astronauts left the Martain surface for home back on Earth that Alpha base would not host humanity’s permanent settlement on the red planet. The most valuable thing they did was run proof-of-concept, and they did indeed live here and survive and make it back home to Earth alive, but that was the last mission to Argyre Planitia. No signs of life in Mars’s past. No trace of past or present geothermal activity in the area. No surface ice or subsurface water reserves. No mineral ores. As far as a foothold on Mars goes, it failed.

Nonetheless, the nomenclature was established with Alpha. Plagued as it was with setbacks and near-cancellations, and departing a month after the ideal launch window that year (37M, 2029E), when SpaceX’s mission finally landed it was named Mars Base Beta. It landed near a crater in the northern hemisphere, 43.28o N, 176.9o E because of the _Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter’s_ discovery of pure water ice there in 2009. While the first humans on Mars were busy being praised and trying to figure out how to tell the folks back at home that their landing spot was as resource-rich as the moon, the second group of humans on Mars were inflating the first not-quite-spherical domes for growing crops. Humanity was here to stay.

SpaceX’s second, third, and fourth missions landed in (roughly) the same spot. They brought more people and more high-tech equipment that we can only get on Earth, and the iconic agricultural domes were built, supplied with all the water their thirsty crops required. In the nine Martian years since it was established Mars Base Beta has been called ‘Basket’ by everyone except the stuffy department heads and the incoming planetary immigrants. The newcomers learn pretty quick. The bureaucrats learn slowly and selectively, but I guess that’s their purpose, isn’t it?

The next Earth-Mars launch window in 38M (2031E) was a little crazier; that’s when I got here. The crew of the Alpha mission loaded their Earth Return Vehicle with enough food to survive roughly 200 ‘days’ in space and an added 140 kilograms of Martian regolith to study back on Earth. At the same time I was finishing my training for ISRO’s mission to Tharsis. About forty other humans were doing the same for a slew of different organizations. On Mars, Alpha launched for Earth without a hitch. We launched two months later. I calculated our trajectories during one of the many sleepless zero-g ‘nights’ in space, and even though we never got within a million kilometers of each other I imagined them reaching a hand out to tag me in as we passed.

The destination for the second Mars Direct mission had already been committed to when the missions ERV landed near the bottom of Valles Marineris in 37M (2029E). SpaceX was building up what would come to be called Basket. Several other mission plans were altered based on the failures of Alpha, exploratory missions designed to search for more abundant and useful resources and return home if needed. The China National Space Administration, the Roscosmos State Corporation, the European Space Agency, our own Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO), Boeing, and Scaled Composites launched in that window. The Mars rush had started.

We almost ran out of Greek letters.

Mars Base Gamma was seeded by ISRO, and we were the lucky ones. Located on Tharsis Plateau in Poynting crater between Pavonis Mons and Ascraeus Mons, we hoped to find concentrations of metal ores in the natural hole drilled into the ancient lava flows. We also hoped to tap into geothermal energy within the volcano for both power and water.

We found the metal ores. Within five Martian months (which vary in duration and average 51 day-night cycles, or Sols) we started mining and refining and producing simple products, which earned us the nickname Gasket. We did not find geothermal activity or subsurface water. If there is any activity still happening within these ancient shield volcanoes, it’s not where I’m sitting.

Still, we did better than the other missions that year, because no one else found shit. All the other missions stayed for their duration, scattered across the surface of Mars as they were, did some science, searched their surrounding areas, and either joined us on Gasket or left on their ERVs.

Of course they were not complete wastes of time and money. The Chinese did find some mineral ores at the foot of Olympus Mons, but the spot wasn’t as high-yield as Tharsis and they didn’t send any more ships there.

When the Russian mission’s ERV was damaged by a coms dish that was thrown around by a sandstorm they made two major milestones. They were the first to trade on Mars, and said transaction was two bottles of vodka made on Earth for the ESA’s spare solar panels, also made on Earth. Those panels powered the short-lived Mars Base Delta’s electrical furnace. The crew used it to prove that the silicon dioxide (SiO2) that makes up 45% of the Martian crust by weight can be refined into pure silicone:

 

SiO2 + 2C  → Si + 2CO

 

They then used that silicon to make silicon carbide patches for their ERV’s heat shield. The process was tedious and precarious because if they got it wrong they would burn to a crisp on reentry to Earth. It delayed their departure 73 Sols past their ideal launch window and three of the eight crew asked to join Gasket permanently instead of taking the risk, but eventually they did launch their ERV and land on Earth alive.

The whole thing was a diplomatic nightmare back on Earth. Not only was there the panic of having humans stranded on Mars, but a whole slew of legal battles that had been brewing for decades came to a head. How do you handle trade on mars? Does it matter if we have to save human lives? Can people on mars trade their resources independently if those resources are owned by a government or corporation on Earth? Who can even make those decisions?

I made those decisions. We’d already modified our unused ERV into a skipper, and we sent it to pick up Sergi, Darya, and Lubov and bring them here. It launched on a parabolic, sub-orbital trajectory to their base, used the directional thrusters to keep the bottom of the ship pointed towards the ground (the periapsis, to be exact) and slowed down via the main thrusters so that it didn't make a new crater for them to explore. When it refueled it did the same procedure with the three cosmonauts on board, arriving back here at Gasket. We’ve been using skipper maneuvers like this ever since to trade, travel, and explore the Martian surface.

Now, purifying Martian silicon into something high-grade enough for modern technology applications (Mars-made solar panels and computers are significant goals) takes significantly more effort and is still something we’re trying to pin down, but the proof-of-concept that happened during this escapade was valuable. Those cosmonauts did more with less than anyone else on Mars before or since because their lives depended on it, and I'm glad that some of them are part of the team here on Gasket.

The Scaled Composites mission had the first and third human deaths on Mars, both due to faulty space suits. (A breach as wide as a pinkie nail will kill you in about forty seconds.) The European Space Agency’s mission, which eventually became known as “Casket,” had the second, a result of cancer. We have so many safeguards against radiation that I honestly can't figure out how that happened, but best guesses are either the Earth-to-Mars trip’s radiation exposure or the 41M (2035E) solar maximum, which caused a direct hit from a coronal mass ejection here on Mars. Everyone should have been in radiation shelters for that though? We had plenty of warning. Anyway, the China National Space Administration’s mission had the fourth and fifth due to a breach in their Hab. If not for the airtight internal compartments the entire mission might have been lost.

Here at Gasket, we had the first birth. Pellava Sadeh was born early in the morning on Sol 406, Year 39, my 582nd day on Mars.

ISRO’s initial mission was ambitious. A crew of four, an intended duration of five hundred Earth days total, no backup rover if the first failed but other than that largely modeled after the Mars Direct mission. Less science equipment, lower total tonnage, half the budget. The goal was to find useful exports back to Earth in the form of rare-Earth metals. If we found them the plan was for future missions to bring the reactors needed to construct robotic methane/oxygen ERVs to actually get them to Earth. The first mission’s ERV could only take the crew and enough food and water to survive the journey so producing transport ships on Mars was, and still is, a must.

My decision to have Pellava had not been part of the plan. With a newborn I certainly couldn't get back to Earth and the crew was faced with the choice of leaving me here with the new arrivals or staying as well. But I mean. . . who wanted to go back to Earth? Humanity needed to be here to stay. Did I force that outcome? No, but my leap of faith got the ball rolling. The rest of the ISRO mission chose not to return to Earth, and two months after I announced my pregnancy, Basket announced three more. They had about twenty five people by then, I guess they were just waiting for someone to break the ice or something.

The night she was born I’d been working late into the night trying to improvise a dome architecture that could utilize the copious amounts of iron and ceramics we were finding in the mines. The problem was keeping it from collapsing under its own weight. Then my water broke. I intercom’d Greg and spent three hours pushing and then not pushing and pushing again and crushing a crumpled ball of notes in my hand and feeling the most agony I’ve ever felt in my life, right there on the floor of the materials science lab. Luckily he proved as good a father as he is a doctor.

That was years ago. I eventually solved the dome problem. . . mostly. The green-thumbs over in Basket were not happy when I told them it was never going to work without steel. The light framework is very costly to make but there was no way around it. Every new dome over there means a tight few months for everyone here while the blast furnaces eat up most of our power. But it is worth it.

Work always did get the better of me. It's so easy to get lost in a problem, weighing the solutions based on what's better in the long run versus what's pragmatically doable. And that’s why I was up late churning the latest of problems over in my mind when I heard about my daughter’s accident through the base’s intercom.

“Dr. Sadeh, please report to communications. Dr. Sadeh, to communications _immediately_.”

* * *

  


_Mars Base Beta, a.k.a. “Basket”_

_Sol 158, Year 46_ _M_

 _August 2050_ _E_

 

### Pel

“Pellava, can you hear me?”

I could hear him, but I didn’t answer because I was busy dreaming of avoiding milestones. People love milestones for some reason, not me. I hate ‘em.

The first person to step foot on the moon is remembered so much more in the public consciousness than the other two people who made the mission possible.

The first person to step on Mars is remembered so much more than his crew, too. Despite the mission's scientific yield of almost zero, they are heralded. The science aspect wasn't their fault, sure, it was a mix of our ignorance of Martian topology at the time and bad luck, but still. The human mind and the public consciousness give each other a run for their money when it comes to irrationality.

The first human to die on Mars was a regrettable milestone, but inevitable. His name was Joar Telvib. He’s buried at Delta site, which is no longer inhabited. Death happens, and both space travel and pioneering a new world are dangerous tasks.

The first person to be born on Mars was big too, or so I've heard. I don't remember the event very well, but I’m told I handled the ordeal with aplomb.

But when the first Martian-born person dies. . . that's a milestone I'd like to put off for as long as possible, and it was a relief when I groggily opened my eyes to the realization that I was, in fact, still alive.

“Pellava?” I heard Val ask again. His face came into focus. Slightly past regulation facial hair, bald head, weary eyes. A few new wrinkles around the crook of his downturned mouth. The classic resting dick face of Mission Commander Valentine Malcolm Ray.

My voice still hoarse from the brief exposure to the Martian atmosphere, I said, "Here I am, Val. Not dead."

He put his hands to his face, rubbed his brow, and sighed. The rest of the room came into focus behind him. Mary, Nik, and Zoel were about the room as well, awake now but looking like they'd been sleeping before Val broke the silence.

"I have to talk to Doctor Richals," Val said, rising. As soon as he was gone the room exploded.

"Oh my God I can't believe you lived!"

"I knew you'd pull through."

"There was so much blood, it's still all over the-"

"Val had to trade the Depot for your surgery-"

I put my hands over my ears to stifle the growing headache, and my friends had the decency to stop.

"What's the condition of the rover?"

". . . We left it on the mountain," Nik answered without meeting my eyes.

"So it's functional. We just need to go get it." When no one responded to that I asked, “It’s functional, correct?”

“As far as we know, yes,” Nik finished, more certain this time.

"You said Val sold the depot?"

"Traded. He traded the rights to it for your surgery. We can still sell what we’ve mined already though."

"Fuck. We’re going to have to get an estimate then."

"Yeah. . . we did actually,” Mary said. A moment passed and she changed the subject with, “Also, your mom called on the satcom when we got you here, and she’s been calling every day since."

Just then, the satcom receiver on the wall rang.

"Fffffffffffffffuuuuck," I said.

* * *

 

_Mars Base Gamma a.k.a. “Gasket”_

_Sol 557, Year 46_ _M_

 _August 2050_ _E_

 

### Dr. Sadeh

The satcom system was new. For the first decade of Mars pioneering we were limited to line-of-sight coms and a single satellite, the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, that was over Basket twice a day and Gasket once a day. Casket hadn't been founded yet. It would take between two and eighteen hours for a message and answer. Earth would often get news before the other base, and it was possible that it could relay a message faster than the MRO depending on the relative positions of Earth, Mars, and the MRO.

So you'd think being on hold for thirty seconds wouldn't be so bad. You'd be wrong. When your daughter might be dead, any amount of time is too long.

"Mars Base Beta communications, receiving Mars Base Gamma, h-"

“Can the formalities, Uther. Is my daughter awake yet?.”

“I. . . I’ll patch you through to her room, Dr. Sadeh.”

And then more waiting.

One long minute later, I heard the receiver pick up on the other end.

"Hello mother."

"You're alive, thank god." I wiped a palm over my face and steeled myself. “Valentine briefed me already, but he wasn’t there. What happened?”

Her voice cracked slightly when she talked, as if her lungs had been damaged, but she didn’t cough. “My suit breached. Wear and tear, these things happen over time. The seals on the suits Earth sent us are starting to fail. We’ve patched them too many times, we need new ones.”

“Yes, I know, I’ve been working with Basket on that. For the time being there is little else I can do. We’re on Mars. Unless you want a medieval iron cuirass I can’t do much. How many times have I told you that shit is too dangerous? _This_ is why. You should be in a hab, not risking your life flying around Alga Crater.”

“Hey, Alga Crater was a great lead! We found so much meteoric glass, you wouldn’t believe.”

I had to take a moment. When I found my words I said, “Pellava, I want you back here on Gasket on the next skipper over."

She gave me an equally weighted silence. Still so much like me, if she had to say something she was going to make sure she said it right. When she spoke again, it was in an even tone.

“Momi, what would I do there? Make bricks and rockets and space suits and hexdomes for the rest of my life? If we're going to survive on this arid wasteland we need to find it, and the best way to look is people like me and the rest of the Emerald Glory setting out on foot. Drones are slow and clumsy. Nothing beats boots on the ground. We can do this.”

“Pell, I will say this once more and only once. Life. Does. Not. Exist. On. Mars. _We are it._ What we need to focus on is surviving and building up the little slice of civilization that we brought with us.”

“I’m not talking about searching for traces or microbes, there has to be a hydrothermal reservoir somewhere on this planet. When I find it _we_ could live there. It will have power, liquid water. . . all the resources we need to grow. Someone has to find it and that someone is me and the rest of the crew. I'm staying.”

I heard a 'click’ as she turned off the coms.


End file.
